One really bad argument against bike infrastructure is that it leads to more pollution because
taking space away from cars makes traffic worse. This is frustrating because it manages
to blame cyclists for pollution created by motorists, and it's wrong because it completely
ignores the basic fact that people make choices about how to get around based on the infrastructure
available to them. If you prioritize the speed of cars over the practicality of walking,
cycling, and transit, you don’t minimize car pollution because everyone gets to their
destination so fast, you maximize car pollution because no one can get around in any other
way. Countless studies show that people in denser urban areas with lots of transportation
options pollute less. For bike lanes specifically, a study from Montreal links a 7% increase
in the length of the city’s bike network to a 2% reduction in transportation emissions.
Another bad argument is that “not everyone can ride a bike” because of age, disability,
or a trip-specific need like carrying something. Bikes actually are very accessible when you
consider all of the different variations, from eBikes to cargo bikes, but that’s beside
the point because no one advocating for bike lanes thinks that cycling is right for every
person or every trip. Lots of people think that cars are synonymous with transportation
and everything else is unimportant, with the exception of planes for long distances, but
no one sees bikes this way. No one wants to build a city where cycling is the only practical
way to get around. Cycling advocates pretty much always support good walkability, robust
public transit, making public spaces accessible to things like wheelchairs and mobility scooters,
and while they usually want a city where cars play a less central role, most think that
cars still have a role to play.
That vision sounds a lot better for accessibility than a city where the car is king and where
you’re a second class citizen if you can’t drive due to age, disability, or money. According
to one survey, 29% of Canadians don’t personally own a car, including 14% who don’t have
a car available in their household at all. That study didn’t even look at people under
16 who obviously can’t drive because, well, it’s illegal. Young people have a lot to
gain from being able to get to school or their friends’ houses without relying on their
parents. What’s fascinating is that when you look to the Netherlands where bad bike
infrastructure isn’t a deterrent, the drop-off in cycling by age happens late, at around
age 80. Older adults actually cycle more minutes per day than younger adults. It can’t be
overstated just how much easier it must be to bike and be active in old age if it’s
just a continuation of what you’ve been doing all your life.
Bad argument #3 against bike infrastructure is that “roads are for cars” or “it’s
unfair for drivers if you take any space from them to give to cyclists”. The idea that
“roads are for cars” is nonsensical; roads existed long before cars and we’d still
build them even if we didn’t have cars. Roads aren’t inherently “for” any particular
mode, it’s up for cities to decide what the best use of them is. The idea that no
space for bikes or transit can ever come at the expense of cars or else that’s unfair
assumes that the current allocation of space is the most fair or optimal one, but why would
we assume that? If it's an attack on drivers to take space away from them, why isn't it
an attack on cyclists to not give them space in the first place? That’s just status quo
bias.
Bad argument #4 is that “we already have bike lanes and no one uses them” in the
specific context where the bike routes they’re referring to are flawed in an important way.
Maybe there’s a city or town out there with great bike infrastructure that goes largely
unused, but when we hear people point to city bike routes that don’t get ridership there’s
usually a reason. Usually they lack serious protection and separation from traffic or
they’re not connected to a larger network that links people to useful destinations.
One example of this is from “Get Toronto Moving”, a car advocacy group opposing bike
lanes on main roads. It highlights a bike lane on Gerrard Street to show downtown routes
not being used, but anyone with any amount of urban cycling experience can tell you that
this is the lowest kind of bike infrastructure. There’s no actual protection from moving
cars on the left, just paint, and you have the added problem of getting doored by parked
cars on the right. Cyclists understand why some people don’t want to bike here, but
if your only experience getting around a city is in a car, you see just another bike lane
that’s not being used. Fortunately Gerrard has improved moderately since then, with more
bollards and less parking.
Bad argument #5 is that “cyclists haven’t earned the right to the road by paying gas
tax”. Lots of studies find that car-specific taxes and fees don’t actually cover the
cost of roads and that they’re partially funded from general revenues, which cyclists
do contribute to, but let’s set that aside. If you proposed a fee or tax for cyclists
proportional to how much space they take and how much wear they cause on the road, and
in return gave cyclists a full, safe, city-wide bike network with coverage equal to that of
cars, we’d take that deal easily. Remember, a bike takes 5 to 10 times less space than
a car and with its rider weighs 10 to 30 times less. If an average driver pays $600 in gas
tax and registration per year, what do we charge cyclists? Something in the ballpark
of $60 a year? If that nominal fee earns us the right to real infrastructure, sure.
Bad argument #6 is that “cyclists don’t deserve infrastructure because they don’t
follow the rules of the road”. It’s really not clear that drivers break the rules any
less because there are lots of ways that drivers break the law like speeding or rolling through
a stop sign that are so common that most people barely even see them as illegal, but setting
that aside, if you want cyclists to break the rules less, withholding infrastructure
from them is an awful approach. That’s how you push them to illegally use the sidewalk
or generally act unpredictably when they don’t know what to do because the road space isn’t
made with them in mind. On top of that, if cycling is inherently a dangerous way to get
around in your city then you’re basically asking for only risk-taking and adventurous
people to engage in it. Build infrastructure that more risk averse people feel comfortable
using and you’ll build a more down-to-earth cycling culture.
Bad argument #7 is that “cycling is just a hobby, it’s not real transportation”.
People who say this have a really skewed view of driving, because driving for recreation
and tourism is extremely common. The worst highway congestion happens on long weekends
in the summer when people are driving to their cottage or a campground or other activities
like hiking or mountain biking. Setting that aside, it really is true that you get the
kind of cycling that you build for. We recently heard someone ask why cyclists in Ottawa always
seem kitted up in lycra like they’re going to a race, and the answer is that Ottawa does
better at providing recreational routes than utility ones. Ottawa’s meandering river
and canal pathways are top notch, but it doesn’t have the same coverage and quality for utility
routes that go through neighbourhoods and directly connect people’s homes to jobs
and stores. This means you get more recreational cyclists, from the slow ones to the fast ones
in lycra. Something that really stood out to us when we lived in Montreal was the good
balance between utility and recreational cyclists.